Love Hurts
by dontcancelhousever
Summary: Isono doesn't know the definitions of love. He just knows he can't let him die.
1. Chapter 1

People assume that working for Mr. Kaiba is difficult, hectic and fraught with constantly shifting laws of gravity. In a sense they would be right but it also involves a great deal of boredom. Isono was feeling like an enormous hypocrite. He always felt this way between disasters.

Bored and slightly on edge. All those nights edging on horror hoping for peace time, for a time without bullets and corporate espionage and fucking Gozaburo and now with life settled he had the audacity to be bored?

However no amount of moralizing was going to change it, he was bored. There were only too many times he could check the security of a building as safe and insular as the Kaiba mansion. Therefore Isono, at this moment had spent the last four hours doing background checks. Or rather re-checking background checks. Of people who had failed. Because they were interesting and bizarre. And he was bored.

In reality while Mr. Kaiba seemed to get himself into the most ridiculous and action packed trouble, he was not an antagonistic CEO. He was polite and firm after the spout of insanity in his youth and through intimidation and admirable intelligence he had eventually gained more parasites than competitors. Isono was starting to associate the genial young man with the ridiculous hair with the kind of trouble that eluded guns and made him completely inadequate as a protector. On the other hand he was open, welcoming and encouraged the young businessman to actually act as young as he was able.

And Isono couldn't turn that away, even if it meant he occasionally watched the laws of physics shatter around him.

Even when Kaiba had been a grim, empty eyed child, he was never as young as when he was teasing Joseph Wheeler or sassing Yugi. While being haughty and arrogant, they were descriptors of a young person.

These diatribes were not well thought out and he often embarrassed himself but Isono knew he could avoid or manipulate them if he needed to. He would rather watch his charge get his pride dashed than see him slip back into the immoveable alien he had been. That vacancy had given him enough nightmares.

But his employer had been acting different. He no longer seemed to find joy in the small aspects of being Mokuba's parent. In fact since Mokuba had gone to college (early because apparently Kaiba's could not just take life at life's pace) they hadn't spoken as they used to. It was almost cursory. The gang of gentle card game ruffians hadn't been to the mansion in over a year. Understandable without Mokuba, it wasn't as if Kaiba had ever invited them.

So there days had taken on a predictable route. Kaiba would wake desperately early (he slept as rarely as ever though he seemed to take on more ware for his trouble). Then he would go to the office and work there for the entire day. Kaiba would nibble a sandwich without interest around two and the day would continue on with Isono's only point of interest being the drive home. He took on the job of driving Mr. Kaiba since it was apparent that the greatest danger to the man's health was aggressive drivers.

During that drive back and forth, he had noticed that Mr. Kaiba was getting thinner but no amount of leaving steaming food around or nagging would entice him to change his routine.

It was as if he were trying to recapture the machine life he had once lived. But he got out of the car slowly; his shoulder slumped in the elevator.

And Isono had begun to notice that he typed slower, his eyes narrowed in intensity as if he were having trouble churning out his thoughts. He was probably just suffering under the workload of refusing to utilize his Board of Directors. They were good men, checked and rechecked by Isono himself, but he could see why Kaiba would be nervous. The last Board had ripped him out of his body. Isono winced. It was one of his most glaring failures as a bodyguard.

Isono looked up at a clock on the wall that had been clicking away the lonely afternoon. It was seven. Time to try to force food into the brick wall that was his boss.

He headed down to the kitchen where Ms. Hirohita was stirring miso soup absently. She heard him coming and turned, smiling. Her kind dark eyes were pinched with worry.

"I hope you'll be able to make him eat this time. I saw him this morning foraging for coffee. He's starting to look a little…well…drowned, I guess is the word."

"Don't let him hear you say that" Isono laughed and Hirohita smirked coyly.

"I wish that young man would say something, and then I could give him a piece of my mind without blindsiding him with human emotions."

"He doesn't take mothering well". Isono admitted and thought of Kaiba's confusion whenever faced with one of Anzu's impassioned pleas. Like he was reading a book which continuously switched languages. He could just see this little woman tearing into his sallow façade of "I'm fine".

She gently pressed a bowl into his hands, tempered with a cloth. The heat radiated through. Kaiba might actually eat this.

"Try to get him to close that laptop lid. I think his eyes are hurting him."

Smart woman, Isono thought and he nodded at her respectfully. Halfway up the stairs a maudlin mood settled over him. Most likely, the CEO would just push the liquid in circles as if it would evaporate from sheer will.

He got to Kaiba's heavy office door at about the same time that the dread in his stomach had coiled into something very tight.

He slid the door open.

He didn't feel the hot soup splashing up his shins. He didn't know whether or not the bowl broke on contact. He just knew that his body was not keeping up with his brain.

It took him a damned long time to get to the other side of the office. Kaiba's shoulders felt small in his hands, jerking and shuddering. His blue eyes were rolled high in his head. He couldn't remember his training. The last time Kaiba had had a seizure was so long ago. The man choked helplessly and Isono turned him on his side, holding down his head with a large hand. Kaiba's hair was soaked with sweat.

How long had he been suffering alone in here?

After a few agonizing seconds, the body under his hands shivered into stillness. Isono turned him onto his back and shrugged off his own jacket, using the soft inner sleeves to wipe Kaiba's mouth. Kaiba's eyelids were fluttering open and closed slowly, as if he were just waking, like a normal person who slept. His breathing evened out. Isono put his hand on the shallow chest and rubbed in circles.

"Breath", he whispered. "I'm here."

He brought him close to his chest and held him tenderly. He evened out his breathing as best as he could. His sunglasses were all glazed and fogged with unshed tears. He waited for his heartbeat to slow down a register and for the acrid taste of adrenaline to ebb away. He looked back down. Seto Kaiba was looking up at him and he looked small and scared in the shelter of someone's arms. Then his eyes iced over with that sardonic black humor that had appeared a few years ago.

"I think we're in trouble", he whispered.

Isono should be calling a doctor, set the limp body in a chair. Restoring his dignity as an innovator and a man. He could have done all those things in a minute. Instead he took that minute to let Kaiba breath, until the last of the shudders had dissipated from both of them.


	2. Chapter 2

It had been an easy choice after the military. Service had been hard; he was more of a technical manager than an all out warrior. And it was hard, fighting for an abstract ideal, a forced brotherhood. Fighting for something tangible, real would be easier. A child. He could protect that.

His mother had been delighted when he was selected as a bodyguard for Kaiba Corp.

It would be great for his resume. She didn't know what they did when she had said that. After they found out about the military contracts, a tense silence settled over their correspondence. Neither of them really knew where they stood but on one thing neither wavered: protecting a child was the right thing do, regardless of the company he would inherit.

He had prepared to talk to children, wandering around with his sister and her new baby to see how they were handled, talked to. All of these were easily applicable to Mokuba. He was like a Labrador puppy, bouncy, sweet and easily disappointed. Seto, on the other hand, was no child. He was a wan unhappy young man in a body that hadn't grown up as quickly.

They didn't talk beyond Isono respectfully taking orders and Seto giving them in an inflexible voice. But that didn't mean Isono didn't know what was going on. The boy was exhausted. His eyes were always drawn in fatigue, graying in misery.

He at least contented himself that the boy was just overworked and not abused. At least until one evening.

Mokuba was in his room, Isono helping him put together a puzzle of a tree. He heard one of the tutors snapping from the kitchen. Isono had been scowling behind his customary glasses. He hated the tutors, unfeeling miserly people. They always talked to the kid like he was an aggressive dog. Then he heard a soft smack and a grunt. Isono was moving before he could control himself. They were sitting in what amounted to a cozy living room in this house. The tutor was pressing Seto's hand hard palm down onto the table. Seto's eyes were ringed white with pain. Isono straightened his shoulders and attempted to look menacing.

"He won't be able to do his typing tomorrow, if you hurt his hands."

The tutor levered his beady eyes at Isono from the wrinkled pit of his face. Isono remembered his drill sergeant and stayed resolved. The tutor released Seto's hand.

"That will be all, Mr. Kaiba. You would do well to check your attitude next time. And fight your own battles." The evil little man left and neither moved until the front door slammed, the maid apologizing profusely in a high voice. Isono moved forward and Seto leveled his slitted eyes on him.

"Don't interfere."

Isono felt taken aback. He then decided that this performance was for the cameras that littered the central rooms.

"I was only thinking of your productivity Master Kaiba" said Isono, collecting his books for him. He headed for Seto's room which he was sure had no bugs or cameras. Gozaburo might be paranoid and controlling but he was also shockingly frugal. Why watch a boy sleep when you could make him too tired and run down to plot against you? The rationale was shockingly effective; Isono knew it from the service. Lack of sleep killed the body; lack of hope killed the spirit. The door shut and Kaiba sat down on the bed. His feet didn't reach the floor. Isono felt an intense wave of fond sadness.

Isono dug into the closet for one of the house's many first aid kits. He could feel Seto's hackles rising.

"You can't wrap my hands. It will just make it all worse."

Isono stood with antibacterial cream and gauze in his hands. Seto's eyes were enormous.

"I'm telling you no."

Isono knelt down in front of the boy and took his defensive curled hands out of their stranglehold on each other. He turned them over. They were burnt. Peeling and bubbling like a chemical had corroded them. He applied the cream to the gauze and then gently started to rub it into his palms.

"You can be taken care of for five minutes without the world ending." Isono said.

Seto said nothing, watching him with bated breath.

The moment was heavy with unspoken questions and impossible wishes.

He finally backed away and stood.

"Get some sleep." Isono murmured heading for the door. He expected sarcasm, indignation from Kaiba. It never happened.

But the next day, Gozaburo informed him that he had been assigned to Mokuba full time. He couldn't tell what the man knew, if it was cruelty or Seto himself pushing him away personally. Either way, he couldn't help but feel slighted but Mokuba's affection and enthusiasm was a good balm.

Years passed and the work was easy. But the Kaiba's were imploding. Seto was getting taller and even thinner, cruelty tempering him into something sharp. Mokuba was miserable, stalling against the change. Much of his job became building Mokuba back up with games and stories after someone, too often Seto, cut him down.

The time came for the yearly Kaiba seduction of the competition and Isono was ready. He was always placed with the other body guards in overall security detail after Mokuba had been put in his room early ( with some contraband hot cocoa from Isono's mug). His job was to protect the guests but he usually spent his time talking to the bodyguards and security of other megalomaniacs was….enlightening to say the least, especially as he would have left the job if not for the little boy's attachment to him. The camp self proclaimed Adonis, Pegasus, had a bodyguard named Croquet who was genial enough, giving him tips on stoicism and impossible requests. They were talking about their mutual dislike for Gozaburo when Seto Kaiba in his chilled white suit, rushed past the room.

Croquet gave Isono a pointed look from behind his glasses, which forced him upon onto his feet. Honestly he didn't want to offer help to the kid only to get rejected especially when he had most likely had too much champagne foisted on him ( Gozaburo had spent a straight month forcing Seto to delegate intoxicated much to Isono's horror).

Seto had retreated to one of mansion's more public bathrooms downstairs. He was washing his face in the sink. When he lifted his head, dripping, he looked gray in the mirror. His severe blue eyes cut to Isono in the mirror and he stiffened.

"I'm fine. Go back to your work."

"Mr. Kaiba…" Isono began but Seto made a cutting motion with his hand and Isono backed out into the hallway. Seto was usually more polite than that. He must be ill. Isono went back to the security station. Croquet was already watching the monitors.

"That man will end up killing him," Croquet grumbled. Seto had reentered the party and Gozaburo was shoving another glass in his slender hand. Even in the grain of the cameras, Seto looked sick.

Croquet pointed out fondly that Pegasus was hitting on three women at once and Isono let his eyes skate to the long haired maverick for just a minute. Subduing a laugh he looked back at Seto. Seto was gone again and Isono felt a strange dread. Ignoring Croquets question, Isono was rushing out of the room. The security room was almost directly next to the ball room, the stairs only a few feet away. Seto Kaiba was standing at the top of the stairs, looking over the rail into the lobby.

"Mr. Kaiba?"

Seto turned to look him slowly. His eyes were unfocused and sad. His eyes held the faint concern of someone freezing to death.

"I can't see." the boy whispered and dropped backwards down the stairs.

Isono had never had the best reaction time in the military. He often had mental jetlag wherein his body moved but any and all plan was left far behind. He was running down the stairs after Seto before he could catch his breath.

Seto was curled on the landing, in an awkward fetal position, his face twisted in pain. Isono reached for him and immediately tried to move him, even as his brain screamed about neck injury and stabilization. Isono tried to straighten his legs and Seto shrieked in pain.

"No, no, don't touch me!"

Isono stopped and Seto settled, shuddering. His inner arm brushed Seto's forehead and the bodyguard flinched. Seto was searing hot, clammy. It had been viral meningitis. Gozaburo had been furious to have to inform his guests. He'd been angrier that Isono had rushed Seto to the hospital without clearing it with him, the boy's skinny limbs curled tightly against all movement. He had seized in the car in Isono's arms. Isono had been so afraid he'd thought his heart would explode, ignoring the phone buzzing on his hip. The driver had watched his emotion with passivity. Isono didn't care. The doctors had dragged them apart when he'd cleared the door and Seto's wide feverish eyes tracked him even as more doors shut between them. Gozaburo had fired him immediately over the phone with a snide and simpering tone. In a voicemail. The prick. Isono had waited at Seto's side until his hasty and block jawed replacement kicked him out with a wide shark smile. In those hours before Seto woke, Isono realized. He had failed. This should never have happened. And it didn't matter to anyone that he had held Seto's hand. The boy would still be ruined. Forever.

Isono shook himself out of memories. The doctor was talking to Seto about biopsies. Isono had not been allowed in during the MRI. Seto looked like he was about to collapse to Isono. To the doctor he would have looked uncompromising and assured.

"We will keep watching the masses, Mr. Kaiba but in all likelihood the biopsy will come back positive for cancerous lesions."

All the breath left Isono's lungs. Seto's face didn't change. He shook the doctor's hand stiffly and scheduled the next appointment.

They walked to the car side by side. Seto opened the door before Isono could get to it and so he awkwardly got into the driver's side and started the car.

He expected a breakdown. Something. But instead, Seto pulled out his phone and started talking to his secretary, moving meetings. They were almost home when he hung up. And leaned forward looking at Isono in the mirror with his electric eyes.

"You are to say nothing to Mokuba if he visits."

"Mr. Kaiba…"

"Nothing. The issue will resolve itself with or without his anxiety." And then in a less businesslike tone, "I don't want him to know."

"If you say so, Mr. Kaiba" Isono said, allowing a little irritation into his voice.

Kaiba leaned back into his chair and closed his eyes tightly.

"Are your eyes bothering you, sir?"

"Yours should be on the road." Kaiba snapped, his hand placed lightly over his right ear. The side the tumor was on. The side the cancer was on. Cancer.

They came to a stop at an intersection. Isono flipped off his glasses and handed them backwards.

"Take them."

Kaiba stared at him blankly in the mirror.

"I don't want your pity."

"Your discomfort is my problem" Isono said, trying to keep from barking. "Take them. Please, it's bright outside."

The light turned green. Isono was going to have to retract his hand. The glasses were lifted out of his fingers.

Isono pulled the personal mirror down in a shade for the first time in years. The sun in his eyes was satisfying, Seto's relaxing shoulders more so.


	3. Chapter 3

Seto Kaiba was never late for work. In fact he was never late waking up. He snapped awake at 6 am every morning. Isono knew that because he was typically drinking his morning coffee when Seto had already torn through the house like a hurricane with OCD.

The staff never adjusted to that schedule; Seto preferred the house empty in the mornings and the noisy work done after he was gone. He even made Mokuba breakfast when the boy still lived in the house. Which led to Mokuba begging the chef to make his breakfasts the night before. Meticulous engineering somehow did not transfer over to the chemistry of food. Seto made good coffee…and that was about it.

But the day after the diagnosis, Seto Kaiba did not get up at 6 am. Or 7. When Isono went into his room with a polite knock at 8, Seto was sitting in bed with his laptop. His narrow blue eyes were hooded against the creeping sprays of sunlight.

Isono knew Seto went for long stretches without sleep sometimes. In fact, he usually had to endure the long stretches with him, on blimps and international planes. Or, on notable occasions, curled in a rolling chair in the lab; Afterhours in the Kaiba Corp technology R & D building, while Seto walked in circles around a prototype, goggles flashing as he muttered. But today, Seto looked tired. And he didn't sit up when Isono came in…he just stiffened in discomfort. Isono noticed a prescription bottle on the bed side table. He wished again that his eyes had the capacity to zoom.

"I updated my will. I'll need it notarized today."

"You're not going to die," Isono said. He had the feeling that he would be adding that phrase to his regular vocabulary for the next few months. Seto shrugged and dismissed Isono with a tilt of his head. The arrogance of the gesture was reassuring. But the anxiety crept back in as the day passed. To anyone else, Kaiba looked and acted as he always had.

Regal, haughty and impatient like the prince he was. In meeting he was imperious and direct, occasionally sauntering down to cruel when he pleased. Kaiba spent today's meetings staring out the window. He usually bored his eyes into equals and inferior both, drawing out their secrets like venom. But today he watched clouds and had to be reminded of deadlines. _Reminded_.

They got Kaiba's will notarized that afternoon with Isono shut outside the door like a jumpy dog. He felt bitter that he hadn't been called as a witness but perhaps Kaiba had acquired an awareness of awkwardness along with his dream weaving. Maybe he still had some secrets himself.

The days continued in that fashion until the day of the appointment, a week later.

That night, Kaiba stiffly went to bed, reminding Isono that radiation therapy was tomorrow morning. He had to have known that Isono wouldn't forget.

Maybe he's afraid, Isono thought and advanced up the stairs with him, under the cover of checking the windows.

If he thought Seto would confide him in that night, he was wrong. Seto did not melt or break. He was like a low hanging fog, immovable. At least until Isono left. Then he dimly heard Seto sigh through the door. Isono hesitated and then moved on. If Seto was determined that this would fail, it would. He had a bad habit of being right about these things: kidnappings, takeovers. The only thing he couldn't predict was the habits of his estranged friends.

Isono knew suddenly that if he called them, they would come. They wouldn't improve the young businessman's mood but they might take his mind off of sickness. Isono didn't dare interfere yet. They might not even need the extra help. Isono took down all their numbers in his personal phone, just in case.

The next morning, Kaiba woke up as he always had, long before Isono (even Isono succumbed to the charm of sleeping into a rainy morning once in awhile). When Isono came down, freshly showered, there was fresh coffee and the cabinet drawers were wide open. He ignored his own mug and instead headed up to Kaiba's room. The young man was sitting cross legged on his bed. He was watching the rain track down the window pane.

"The appointment is at 9, sir. You should probably get dressed if you want to be on time."

"I am dressed," Kaiba murmured and slanted his cool gaze onto Isono for his reaction. The master of the house was wearing a soft gray long sleeved shirt and black pajama pants.

Isono grasped for something to say. He had never seen Seto in a sweater let alone walking around in sleep wear.

"That's good. You'll be…comfortable."

"It's not about that," Kaiba snapped. "It's about recognition. I don't want people snapping photos, especially when it gets worse. This is better than a wig."

It was true; he looked like a young wan man with messy hair. Like Isono's son or younger brother. Not like the CEO powerhouse who had gone in a for a checkup a day before.

"You have to dress down too." Isono winced. " I don't have anything here that's appropriate."

"Do you have_ jeans?" _Kaiba used the word, like it was a moist, stinking thing.

"No, sir. But if I took off my glasses and took the gel out my hair, I could look like I had just been to work. Some low level job maybe. I'm not very recognizable." He had almost said important.

Kaiba leveled him with a look and then stood, smoothing the fabric down smugly.

" Fine. Get dressed. We leave in fifteen."

Then he walked down the stairs as if were still trailing an enormous coat.

Isono spent the whole time dressing trying not to think of how feminine the slope of his boss' shoulders had been. He didn't like seeing Kaiba out of his self-prescribed uniform. He didn't know how to act. And it made him feel like a hypocrite because hadn't this been what he'd wanted? For Kaiba to act his age and have a normal life? He couldn't explain it and he didn't want to. He thought of expense reports and hospital exits while softening his hair.

Leaving his glasses on the bed was hard. But Kaiba calling through the house in annoyance charged him with purpose and he dropped them. He hadn't realized how much anonymity allowed him a professional demeanor until Kaiba glared at him from the bottom of the stairs and Isono had nothing to hide his sassy traitorous eyebrow with. He braced for a tongue lashing. Kaiba's face twitched and he shrugged towards the car. The ride over was silent.

Getting out of the car (which was chosen for its normalcy…and had originally belonged to the old cook), Seto and Isono walked into the hospital side by side. Kaiba, without his coat, was hunching. Isono, without his glasses with squinting.

"I'm sorry, sir. You can't come beyond this point."

Isono balked.

"I thought it was just radiation therapy. Could I sit with him?"

The physician's assistant grimaced which twisted her pretty mouth.

"Actually it's stereotactic radio surgery. We'll be performing radiation surgery without opening the skull. It should be effective but it means you need to stay here."

Kaiba looked over his shoulder at Isono with an unfathomable expression and then turned to go.

" Mister Kaiba."

Kaiba stopped and turned back to him.

He could die in there. He could never open those curious blue eyes again. Even the most robust person, anesthesia was dangerous. And this young man had the personal care routine of a heroin addict.

Isono held out a hand. Kaiba looked at it like Isono had offered him his shoe. Then without changing his blank face, he firmly shook Isono's hand.

"It'll be fine" they said in unison, forcing a harsh laugh out of Isono. Kaiba lips quirked and he let go and walked through those white doors, alone.


	4. Chapter 4

Isono was checking his hair for gray in the reflective surface of the table top when the doctor came for him. The man's reflection had surged out of nowhere and Isono caught preening, had jumped like a teenager caught with porn. The doctor didn't laugh or reassure him. He just said that Isono could visit now. The walk to the ICU was long. Nurses darted by with places to be. A doctor surged past them and into the stairwell. Isono's heart was racing. People died here. People were _dying _here.And the doctor wasn't smiling.

"How was the surgery?" asked Isono unable to just hear their feet anymore. It was so far away, why weren't they running?

The doctor stopped and then looked at him steadily.

" We were able to remove the tumor but it was uneven and it seems to have caused cysts that are just too deep for us to go after surgically. His brain swelled during the procedure and he's on some powerful medications now. But the cysts are in places that are…not optimal. We'll have to watch their growth very carefully. But we've done what we can do now. He's comfortable."

Not optimal. Isono's brain was skipping like a record. Not optimal. Seto said that just the other day about a CEO suicide in America. Not optimal. God.

"When will he be up and about?"

The doctor looked at him steadily now and Isono realized why he hadn't really met his eyes before. This was not a recovery. This was a death knell.

"We'll try to shrink the cysts but as they seemed to come from the tumor itself, its unlikely we can shrink them. They will continue to cause bleeding and swelling. His seizures will increase. He has maybe a year."

Isono thought he said the next part well but he actually just stuttered, " B-biopsy?"

" Too deep in the tissue" the doctor said softly. "We've contacted Dr. Helena from Princeton, she should be here in a few weeks. She's one of the world's leading research oncologists. I wouldn't give up hope just yet. But there may be no cure. Or no way of reaching the cysts. Not even nano technology can penetrate the gray matter safely."

Isono was going to throw up. He'd run over a man a month ago doing his job and _now_ he was going to throw up. He eventually didn't but he had to lean over and grab his knees and breathe.

" In his situation, the usual policy of visiting hours will be suspended for you."

Breathe.

" When you see him try to refrain from telling him just yet. He might panic and hurt himself in his delirium."

Breathe. He's still alive you fool, Isono thought. He's waiting for you.

Isono straightened his back and started forward, the doctor had to trot to retake the lead. At the back of the ICU, in a room alone, was Kaiba.

The first thing Isono noticed were the angry red welts along the crown of his forehead. They were yellowed with iodine and pin pricked. And he was connected, by the side of his skull, to some sort of horrible machine, that looked like it belonged in a James Cameron movie.

"We performed a Ventriculostomy after Oxygen Therapy failed. It can be removed soon, his respiration and pressure are already much better" The Doctor said. Isono couldn't hear him. His own pressure was skyrocketing. This young man would die in a place like this, seize until he stroked out.

The doctor said some sort of excusing phrase, put a hand on his shoulder and left. Isono sank into the chair. It was comfortable. His brain was traitor for getting distracted by his ass.

Kaiba eyelids twitched in his sleep and he made a soft noise of pain. Isono wanted to brush back his hair. But manmade bee stings littered his forehead. So Isono took a spidery hand in his own. This would have been a good time to weep. But he didn't. He just rested his head on the soft edge of the bed and rubbed the carpal tunnel joints of that thin hand until he couldn't think of anything but wheelchairs and bedpans. He thought of entering that bedroom room and not hearing click clacking or someone cursing in German or someone sneaking around at night pretending he wasn't drinking more coffee at 4 am. Isono needed a good wracking cry but instead he just leaked into the witching hours.


	5. Chapter 5

Hey guys, thanks so much for the support! This addition is crazy short and for the future and past alike, sorry about the medical terminology. I'm doing research but real life application is harder than I thought it would be. If anyone has seen 'Third Star' ( and if you havent…hello!?) it's more about the emotion than the disease, but I know I will probably dismiss some natural law at some point. Thanks for the patience, guys.

Seto had woken up in pain and that meant that he was snappish and impatient. He wanted to go home. His eyelids were heavy and purple and his pocked head seemed even more swollen for his trouble. Isono wanted him to stay but Seto didn't care. His voice was hoarse and his hair was greasy. He looked like a caged dog.

Then he rallied all that Kaiba fury and got discharged. But not even his wrath could convince them to let him walk out. He sat in his wheelchair and disguise clothes and sweated with exertion.

Kaiba made an appointment at the head desk, serenely demanding he see all the paperwork going on over his head. Isono still wasn't allowed to see it all, which made his face hot. They made it to the car before the young man's breathing went ragged and he sagged into the back window. Isono had ordered someone from the company to come and drive their car. He put up the window between them. Then he slung an arm around Kaiba's shoulder. Kaiba jumped and swung out like he'd been bitten by a dog.

" Get off!"

Isono was tired. He'd been up all night. His nose hurt from sniffling and his eyes ached. He was tired of stubborn young men, recalcitrant doctors and placid nurses.

" Shutup and rest your head."

Kaiba was clearly stunned. Isono didn't look over to find out.

" It isnt your fault that this happened. But no more risks or weighing work over your life. No more. Youre going to rest and fight and win. You are going to live a long time. So shutup. Just shut the fuck up."

He really expected to thrown out of the moving car. Punched, smacked, hit with a briefcase. He expected to be fired or emotionally eviscerated or called out on his own bullshit. Instead-

" I can't put my head down. The sores hurt too badly."

They sat in silence for the rest of the ride. Kaiba didn't put down his head but he also didn't take out his phone. Isono didn't take his arm back but he also let the Kaiba sit ramrod straight. They were at an impasse. They got home and Kaiba walked up the stairs slowly. He turned at the top. Isono waited for that other shoe from the last time he tried to overstep. It didn't come. Kaiba's closed his eyes and inhaled.

Then he said, " Chemo starts on Monday." And walked away, like it was nothing. Isono needed help, he scanned through his books. This was the decision that might get him fired. He dialed the number anyway.


	6. Chapter 6

Thank you guys so much for the support! I thought I was the only one who wondered about dear Isono. I'll try to keep up with updating because I know how aggravating it is when you waits weeks and you get about a page. Anyway thanks again!

Joey Wheeler showed up at the house a few days later with none of that old thuggish arrogance. He'd grown up. His hair was slicked back and he was dressed as a professional. He wore a starched shirt and he'd filled out. He didn't look like a stray dog anymore (Isono had privately enjoyed Seto's nickname). He was going to school to be a counselor.

He wanted to help families that suffered under addiction like his had. He hadn't changed entirely from a young man however, he explained all of this as he raided the fridge. Joey had been the only one to return Isono's calls. Around a rice bowl dripping with sauce, Joey explained that Tristan had become Duke's partner in advertising his growing company. Bakura was working in a museum, impressing senior professionals with his in-depth and impossible knowledge of ancient Egypt. He was also Joey's first patient for his obvious bipolar disorder. And all the magic shit Isono was still pretending to ignore.

Serenity and Mokuba were apparently on vacation together ( a comfort as Isono now didn't feel so guilty for not being able to call him). They were both looking for universities, Mokuba for a graduate program. Yugi was concentrating on the business and taking care of his grandfather. Solomon Mouto had prostate cancer. Isono felt something hopeful in him slide through the floor. The young man who had moved Seto out of his aggressive catatonia with his endearing unyielding will, was now in the position Isono was in. They might have to grief counsel together. Isono pushed the thought away.

" So where's moneybags?" asked Joey, lightly. Isono suddenly felt a strike of nerves.

" He's very ill."

Joey's face fell. Isono knew he had been the right person to call.

" And doesn't want to tell Mokuba. I thought some companionship might…" Joey's somber expression broke into a sharp laugh.

"Companionship? He might fire you. He does not want to see me."

"It's been years, he started chemo yesterday. I think he needs a friend. And if you were an enemy you would not have been able to walk into this house."

Joey shrugged after a tense moment. " I'll give it a shot."

He headed upstairs. Isono didn't hear screaming or crying or smashing glass. An hour passed in which Isono made and then reheated soup with still no sounds from upstairs.

Finally he couldn't stand it anymore, he launched himself up the stairs and threw open Seto's door. Seto was sitting on the end of the bed. Joey was sitting on a chair. And they were both trying to toss cards into a hat. They both looked up in surprise.

Seto then narrowed his eyes. Even though he had spent almost all of yesterday vomiting, he still looked like a CEO, a man not to contend with.

" We are having words later" Seto said and Joey laughed from his belly and threw another card. Isono went back downstairs and threw out the soup. His life had been odder before but he hadn't felt this unsettled in years.

" You cannot keep doing this".

Joey had left after stealing another rice bowl with beef. Seto had made tea that he hadn't touched. They moved around the kitchen in a surprisingly comfortable silence. Isono thought he might pass out. It was like the bizarre silence before an explosive thunder clap.

Isono had then managed to eek out some sass despite the fact that Seto was radiating annoyance at him.

" So…you two didn't kill each other."

Seto had turned on Isono like a rattlesnake.

" Why are you still here?"

Isono froze. In the hall a clock was ticking.

" What do you mean?"

"Why are you here? You are a security professional, you are not a nurse maid or a hospice worker," Seto said softly.

" You won't need hospice" snapped Isono.

" This denial is getting tiresome. With medical intervention I have a year. My brother is grown and doesn't need a babysitter. Why are you still here? You should be asking for a reference by now."

Isono felt hot. He was sweating into his hair. The clock was off by a millisecond. Isono tried to remember the last time he slept well. And just for a second, he imagined it. Leaving. He could go home, maybe meet someone. No more high stakes stress, no more corporate paranoia. No more waiting and waiting and waiting. No more Seto. No more. This was what giving up tasted like.

He looked up into those worn blue eyes imbedded in that hard pale face. His stomach swooped painfully.

" You stupid kid."

Seto's eyebrows shot straight up into his hair.

"For the last time this is not about money. It has never been about money. Almost any other company would be less stressful to work at. If you're trying to insult me so I'll leave, then you underestimate my ability to take your bullshit."

Seto's face had been darkening throughout the tirade and he obviously ground his straight teeth.

" I should fire you. Ever since this started you've been overstepping your station. "

" If you did, I'd still be here. I've done it before."

Seto turned on his heel and walked into the hall. Then stopped and came back. His grace was starting to stutter into an actual human gait. It made Isono's teeth hurt. The young man's face was tight with something.

" I don't understand," he said softly. " You set me on playdates, you demand to be part of my treatment. Who do you think you are?"

" I don't know what to call it," Isono started. " But I wouldn't waste my time with people who aren't worth it. If you can't have me here, then you have to call Mokuba. I won't let you suffer in this big house by yourself."

Seto stared at him, his eyes settled in a measuring way. Then he sighed.

"I'm going to die in this house, Isono. If you feel the need to be here when it happens, then stay. But you will respect my privacy."

Isono's face was getting hotter behind his eyes.

" Was it so bad seeing Mr. Wheeler?" Isono asked and Seto shrugged. "Our families might be united someday, might as well play nice. And I can respect an attempt at bettering oneself. Well trained dogs can be an asset to a home."

Isono only heard one overriding message in the speech, that Isono had made a terrible mistake. Seto would now be grooming Joey to take his place as a guardian. The idea that Mokuba was going to get a call soon was being brushed away.

Isono wanted to tell him that he was wrong. They were both going to grow old. Maybe without money between them, they could be friends. Two bitter warhorses in their twilight years. But right now his charge was young and needed the structure that Isono had always represented.

"Are you hungry?" he asked instead. Seto shook his head. But then his eyes brightened into something conniving.

" But Wheeler was a terrible shot. You essentially have a thirty card pickup in your future. "

Isono followed him up the stairs almost in shock. A few weeks ago, he'd be out on his ass. He almost missed the ice cold CEO because he knew that man would fight. He didn't know if Seto wouldn't see this illness as the chance to check out. Granted it had been Seto to trick Gozaburo into a surprise adoption. He'd never been a pushover even as a little kid with a downcast face and ambition radiating off him in cold waves.

Only time would tell who'd reassert themselves in the biggest crisis. Seto or Kaiba. Isono wasn't even sure who he wanted on his side.


	7. Chapter 7

After the next treatment ( to which he went alone) Seto started to lose his peripheral vision. Isono wouldn't have known except that Joey kept nailing him in the head with a fluffy blue eyes doll from Mokuba's old room. He had thought Joey was just pestering him but after watching it happen a few times ( with no mirth from Joey) Isono began to see that it wasn't teasing.

It was scientific.

Isono felt immediately cut out. It seemed as if Kaiba had a capacity of attention for one and with Joey around on the weekends, they spent all their time together. Doing relatively nothing. Kaiba would work on his laptop and Joey would watch TV, studying during the commercial breaks. Half the time they wouldn't talk at all. Sometimes they would talk a great deal, muttering away behind closed doors. Once, Isono came in and they were both dozing, Joey from overwork, Seto from his heavy meds. During the week Kaiba was recalcitrant and detached. He breezed through meetings and R and D sessions. A treatment passed and Kaiba suddenly appeared in the living room.

Left alone, Isono had been reading a book on cloning. Kaiba saw the title and snorted before saying, " I want to go to the hospice center."

Isono's stomach swooped when Kaiba continued, " I have an appointment with Solomon Mouto."

Seto didn't wear his ridiculous disguise going out. But he did dress down. He didn't cover himself in bangles and buckles, instead he wore a warm black coat. With his shoulders slackened and his face so wan, he didn't look like Seto Kaiba anymore. He looked unfortunately like a recovering addict. Isono made sure to say so under his breath just to see a pique of old rage. When they got there, Seto refused help getting out of the car, pretending to look for something in his pockets while he caught his breath.

They were directed to one of three hallways but they didn't need the directions. They could have followed the hum of a crowd well enough. Around Solomon's door was the entire gang, minus Mokuba and Serenity of course. And Bakura, although that was welcome. Tea had grown out her hair, only to tie it in a neat sock bun on top of her head. She was wearing a sweat stained tank top and had a high flush on her cheeks.

Teaching dance, Isono intoned to himself.

Tristan looked the same, though his hair was alittle less like a flustered cockatoo. He and Devlin were trying to read from the same small tablet, elbowing each other for room. Devlin had cut his hair. It was professional and slicked back now. His suit was gray. He looked like a business man. It made Seto look even more like a kid after a night of hard living. Joey was sitting on a bench with an arm around Yugi Mouto, who was staring at the ground and listening. He still looked like some sort of stuffed animal to Isono but colder, like some high wind had come and swept something out of him. His violet eyes swept up and settled on them. Isono expected a high pitched hello, instead he just turned to Joey and murmured something. Joey's head snapped up.

" Hey moneybags! Are those civilian clothes? Because you kind of look like my dad after a bender."

" Your father couldn't afford my socks," snapped Kaiba and there was a moment of tension before Joey laughed.

" Good point but with the way youre looking, he'd just knock you over and steal em. Guys, you remember Kaiba. Guy who caused havoc for years but who also owns planes we might need so be nice?"

Isono felt a glow of pride. Joey was acting normal, calling attention to and away from Kaiba's obvious illness with ease. Tea was less subtle. She stood up and used her ballerina toes to throw her arms around Kaiba's neck. He stiffened and then awkwardly patted her back.

"I'm glad youre here," she said. There was a flurry of handshakes and back pats from Devlin and Tristan and then all that was left was Yugi. Yugi looked up at him with a soleumn expression that looked uncomfortable on such a little face.

" You can go in if you want, he's waiting for you."

No handshake, no hug, no hello. Kaiba didn't seem put out, he just walked in and closed the door behind him. Joey glared at Yugi.

"What the hell man? Be nice."

"He's fine" YUgi said sotto voice and then walked away down the hall. It was only then that he realized the kid wasn't dressed in leather but he was still in all black.

Joey shook his head at the retreating back.

" He's not handling this well, now with Kaiba sick…looks like morale is going below basement level."

Isono felt like he might swallow a vital organ. Jpey had told them. They all knew.

" I didn't think that was possible," Tea said and absently brushed her ear.

" You okay, man? It must be hard having to be on the front lines all the time."

Tristan was talking to him. Isono had to remember consonants for a second.

" I'm alright. He keeps to himself lately."

"Bet that drives you crazy," Joey said knowingly and Isono felt a stab of jealousy.

"Listen though, if youre curious, its not like he tells me anything important either. Literally the other day we talked about cars for three hours. I have no idea if he was even paying attention the whole time. He kept zoning out."

Isono felt something in him decompress. He didn't let it show.

" I just hope this helps both of them," Isono said and stared at the closed door.

Joey left after some small talk to go find coffee ( and Yugi) while they all waited around the door. Tea started stretching, something all three men were trying hard to not watch. It had been twenty minutes when Kaiba stalked out of the room and was down the hall faster than Isono could close his book.

"Mr. Kaiba!"

Seto didn't stop, he just zoomed around a corner out of sight.

"Mr. Isono," a voice grumbled from within the open door. " I'd like to talk to you, if I could."


	8. Chapter 8

Solomon Mouto had always been a bit of an imposing figure. He had a weight of experience to him, a warmth tempered with stoniness. Everytime time they had to interact, Isono felt like he was nine years old. He'd personally hoped that Mokuba would spend more time at the Mouto residence, so he could have a father figure like that.

But he hadn't. He'd clung to Seto until their fights drove him headlong into his own life. Isono found himself chewing his fingernails when he thought on it too closely. Mokuba being responsible for his studies, his bills. Driving. It was unnecessary worry, Mokuba got his flying license at sixteen but Isono knew for a fact that Kaiba privilege didn't always translate into the real world.

The man who seemed to be the central parent for all these confused young people was now shriveled down like a raisin. He was small, his bones pushing through like fingers in dough. The eyes were the same though, fiercely independent and worldly. Would Seto look like that, eyes transplanted into an alien and failing body?

"I know I look a sight," the man said and Isono felt blood rush up into his head.

"I'm sorry, I'm being rude."

"You're worrying about your charge. It's understandable. He's what we need to talk about." Solomon pointed firmly to the chair at his bed side.

"Have a seat."

Isono sat down heavily.

"I'm afraid he's giving up." It felt good to say it aloud. Solomon looked on him critically.

"I'm afraid with him it isn't that cut and dry." Isono raised his head. He felt a sick slice of jealousy. Everyone was getting secrets out of his employer except for him.

"He is a survivor" Solomon continued, fatigue making bags under his eyes. "He has lived his life under duress for so long that he doesn't actually enjoy any of it. For a man like Kaiba, death is not an option but it is also seen as…relief when it comes."

Isono's stomach flipped. It was the unspoken fear that had been rattling around in his brain since he met the boy. Said out loud by essentially a stranger, in a hospital bed. Isono stared at his feet again.

"I think at this point, Kaiba had planned out every masterstroke of his life but without that numbness he possessed when I first met him…he's worn out. He can't do the things he once did, nor does he want to. I think he would like to enjoy his life but he feels it isn't an option. He doesn't know how to connect, feel. He doesn't even know how to suffer like a human being. His life has never been his own, but you know that. "

Solomon smiled sadly.

"That young man is older than I am. And he knows it."

Isono sucked in a breath.

"What can I do?"

"What you have been doing." Solomon said, itching around an IV. "Try to get him interested in the world around him, the world outside the corporation he built. It will come down to him. It's always been up to him. The man doesn't seem to know how to exhale."

Isono wished he had his glasses, he could feel the lines of grief segmenting his face.

"Did you tell him that? Is that why he burst out of here?"

"No." Solomon said but the vowel broke on a yawn. "He asked for my forgiveness and I wouldn't give it."

Isono felt the peculiar sensation of wanting to punch a man in hospice.

Solomon laughed. "You really do care about him, don't you? No, no, I didn't end it there. I told him that I could forgive a boy terrorized into sadism. I could not forgive someone who was intentionally shrugging off their life, when I am losing mine."

Solomon's mouth trembled but his eyes were dry.

"I told him that he needs to live. That wasn't what he wanted to hear. He came here looking for permission to die. He doesn't get to just tidy up his life so he can let it go. "

Isono breathed out and then on impulse seized Solomon's hand.

"Thank you."

Solomon's hands used to be big and strong as catcher's mitts. Now they were soft with frailty. And they shook.

"These kids." Solomon said shaking his head.

Isono could only nod.

He and Solomon talked a bit more about the other kids: the old man's pride for Joey, his anxiety over Yugi's withdrawal before he needed to rest. Isono left the room and shut the door. They were all gone and the hallway was quiet. Isono numbly followed the track Kaiba has taken to a small cafeteria. The majority of the kids were sitting at a table, playing one of Duke's games. Tea had a hand in Yugi's hair, pushing it about. He was staring at a cup of coffee without interest, ignoring the larger boy's game. Isono walked up and felt like an enormous interloper.

"Do you know where Mr. Kaiba went?" They all (besides Yugi) smiled up at him. He felt a little less isolated by age, like a babysitter.

"He and Joey went to find some stronger coffee, I think there in the lounge upstairs."

Isono wandered through the halls, ignoring the sound of machines, the smell of sickness even as it sank into his clothes and skin and railed him with despair. Seto wouldn't die in one of these places.

He was too proud.

He'd always thought Seto would die in a shootout, in a kidnapping.

Or even at his desk.

He would instead most likely die in his bed, alone, not wanting to bother anyone. Isono's jaw hurt from clenching by the time he found them. They weren't in the lounge but they had coffee so they must have found it. They were sharing a window ledge. Like old men, they had their wallets open and were sharing stories of raising children.

Joey would probably go on to do the real thing.

Seto wouldn't.

His employer looked up at him. His eyes were dark blue from the twilight outside. His hair was matted down like he'd been in the rain but he wasn't wet. He was just wilting.

"Would you like to go home now, Mr. Kaiba?"

Seto nodded with a heavy blink. Joey walked them out, jabbering on the whole time. Isono took on a sizeable lead to give them privacy. Before they hit the exit though, Joey had made plans to come over the next day. Kaiba told him he had a meeting. He had actually canceled all his meetings. Joey didn't press it but he gripped his shoulder companionably and said goodbye. Isono walked him to the car and opened the door for him. Seto lowered himself in carefully; he kept his eyes closed the entire ride home.

Days passed, more appointments Isono was shut out of. Barely a word passed between them that wasn't a nicety. Seto did his meetings over Skype, claiming he had mono. A doctor's note to the board had assuaged their concerns. Seto promoted a young engineer to supervise his R and D department. His name was Ruan and he had dark skin and kind eyes. Isono had checked his backstory so thoroughly that he was now a member of his mother's book club. They were reading 'The Lovely Bones'. It was one of the big reasons why he knew he would be single forever.

Things continued in this state of tension for a week until Seto canceled one of his treatments. The doctor called to confirm and merely by chance, Isono had been the one to get to the phone (Seto's showers were no longer 5 minute affairs). He felt like he couldn't breathe. He tried to call Joey but the line was occupied. So he went down to the kitchen and made sleepy time tea (he'd been giving it to Kaiba without letting him know the hilarious brand name). Seto came down dressed warmly in the already heated house. He took the cup from the counter and headed back to the stairs.

And Isono lost control.

" What the hell are you doing? You cannot give up, you said you'd keep trying-"

Kaiba spun on him, teeth bared.

"Do you need your ears checked?"

"No."

"Did you fall on your head recently?"

"No."

"Did you graduate the sixth grade?"

"Mr. Kaiba…"

"Then you know what terminal means, Isono. I should not have to keep identifying it for you."

Isono felt closer to tears than he'd ever been in a fight with his employer. And once he'd actually been shot at the time.

"Then call Mokuba. If you really think it's over, he should be here."

Seto turned and looked at him. He'd only seen that bizarre flat look once before, in video footage from Duelist Kingdom. When Seto had been walking backwards towards the ledge. His eyes were wide and empty, like a perfect patch of sky. Then he blinked and the expression cleared into faux boredom.

"He'll come on his own soon enough. Solomon is running out of time."


	9. Chapter 9

Things were tense in the Kaiba household since their fight. Isono had this fantasy that he would throw down his contract and demand to be treated like a friend. But that idea died in practicality. He was caretaker, not a friend. And this was as close as he was going to get. Mokuba still hadn't called. His facebook page was full of pictures and sarcastic quotations. He and Serenity seemed to have formed a real adult relationship. She didn't seem intimidated by his former wealth nor he by her former poverty. They enjoyed each other. And Isono realized that Serenity might be the perfect person for Seto to talk to. She had faced down a deadly, debilitating condition and survived after all. He asked Joey but Joey just shrugged it off sadly.

" I promised Kaiba, I wouldn't interfere. When they come home, sure. But I'm not going to be the whistleblower."

Then he'd headed up the stairs, with some risotto that Devlin had made, to try to goad Kaiba into eating.

And that is how Isono lost his last chance to avoid being the bad guy. So life settled into a steady descent. Kaiba's vision continued to suffer, causing him to smack into corners and barely clear elevator doors. The Board was still in the dark as mono did take a long time to recover from and to them it had only been a few weeks of absence. Seto still cleared paperwork for most of the day. But like other CEO's he was absent from the actual processes, sitting in bed instead of frequenting a high end escort. One night, Isono had seen Seto to bed and he had seemed as bit strange, off in some small way.

Isono was so tired of worrying needlessly that he had just gone to bed. He woke up at 5 a.m. feeling sick, sweating and nervous. He threw the thin covers off and strode down the hall. He was seriously expecting it to be nothing. Seto's room stank. Isono flipped on the lights and Seto wasn't moving, his eyes rolled back into his head. Isono surged to his side and tried to pull off the covers but they were sodden. He was too scared to move him, so he called an ambulance. They were there in two minutes. In that time Isono learned two things.

Seto had the highest fever Isono had seen in years. He was 106 degrees.

He had soiled himself. Not in the accidental loss of control way. Not even in the usual way of sickness. But in the sense that his innards had liquefied and his body had panicked and tried to get rid of everything.

The crew wouldn't let him ride along, so he was left alone with a mess that made him throw up twice. He picked Seto up a few hours later, his fever broken and an IV supplying him with electrolytes. Though he couldn't have remembered, nor would Isono have preferred him to know that humiliation, he seemed to sense something horrible had happened. When Isono came to affix him to an new IV, he was making a list of pros and cons on the subject of adult diapers. Isono laughed so hard, he thought he might throw up again. Kaiba threw the notepad at him and covered his chortling by pretending to drink some water.

The tension broke then as surely as the fever had. And Isono decided something. He couldn't be down the hall anymore, especially since the fever seemed to have undone all the good of the medication. Seto was having seizures again. Not the enormous ones that would drive him to the floor, but little ones that would make him rigid and shuddering for a minute. He couldn't be so far away anymore. So despite the memory of the mess ( and the social awkwardness of it all) Isono showed up in Seto's room a few nights later, in his stupid pajamas, reading glasses on his head and book in hand. Without asking, he climbed onto the other side of the bed and settled the comforter over his legs.

Seto, on his laptop, stared him down for a moment, before going back to his blurred typing. Eventually Seto tired and closed the laptop. Isono waited a few more minutes before turning off his own lamp and settling into the bed. It was very comfortable; he wondered again at Seto' choice to keep Gozaburo's mattress. It creeped him out. Seto had explained something about the assumed invulnerability of predators. Isono had been too distracted by the horrible corpse smile making a jagged gash across his femininely pointed face.

Seto turned towards him suddenly and looked right at him. In the dark, he was all blue but his eyes were still stabbingly clear.

" I always knew I would die young."

Isono felt like he was going to throw up again. He wondered if Seto was just trying to scare him out of the bed. He fought down the panic and nodded for him to continue.

" After we came here, I thought ' If I can just make it until Gozaburo is gone' and then ' if I can just make it until this company can stand on it's own for Mokuba' and then ' if I could just see Mokuba become an adult'. It was comforting to have those end points, for there to be corner I could turn away from what was happening. But now."

He turned onto his back.

" Now there are so many end points. Mokuba will marry that girl. He'll have children. They might look like my mother, my father. I want to see that even when I never wanted to before. I wanted to sleep and be buried and be over. But now."

Isono watched the pale light of the window catch and shine near Kaiba's ear. A wet trail had snaked unobserved into his hair.

" Now I want it to be over in a different way. Because it's different than I imagined it, because it's not my terms and it's not rest. And I have people to leave. Even if I'm, like I was, I'd still exist. "

Isono took his thumb and rubbed that wet trail away. Kaiba let him, passive as a lamb.

" What would you have done?"

" I keep a gun in my desk." Kaiba said hollowly and Isono swallowed loud in the night. He fought the urge to run and get it, hide it, burn it down for scraps.

" It isn't loaded- was always too afraid Mokuba might find it. Sometimes I would put it to my skull anyway and pull the trigger. And imagine how good it would feel. Peace . But I'm done now aren't I? And it's just as horrible. I think it's supposed to be that way, for me at least. "

He rolled away from Isono onto his side.

"Peace. Of all the fictions I thought up at my little desk..."

In a perfect world, Isono would have known what to say. The world would be turning and bowing to their need. Maybe it would be snowing outside. Maybe a fat moon would cast some beauty. But the sky was overcast and rain was drizzling thick on the windows, not loud enough to really drown out their breathing.

Seto wasn't crying.

Isono wasn't either.

He didn't do some grand gesture, spin him around and tell him about life's worth. He didn't leave. He didn't even have the bravery to touch him. He just lay there and eventually fell asleep. When he woke up, Seto had managed to worm his head under his arm and was tucked up into his arm pit. Isono could have left, gotten the gun, removed some razor blades and pills. But he didn't. He just rubbed the young man's shoulder until he woke up slowly, blinking like a fawn and then made him some eggs.


	10. Chapter 10

Seto agreed that day to start his treatments again. He let Isono come with him. It was standard as far as the hospital was concerned and to Kaiba it was old hat. Kaiba sat in a red chair tipped low with an IV in his arm. He didn't change his routine for Isono, he went over corporate stats and Ruan's report, murmuring to himself continuously. Isono sat nervously watching the yellow fluid slide into Kaiba's veins. Outside the other cancer patients were talking quietly. Seto didn't seem to long for the contact. But he started to nod his head in exhaustion near the end. Isono collected his papers. He helped him walk out, his uncut hair sloping awkwardly to the side. Isono mussed it as they cleared the doors. A news crew van was outside. Seto went stiff so fast he almost fell over. Isono's heart was thumping painfully in his chest. He shrugged off his glasses and tucked them in his pocket.

" Be still," snapped Kaiba, allowing his shoulders to slump further into the disguise. The reporter looked right at them. And then away.

They made it to the car without finding out why they were there.

"Make inquiries," Kaiba said, as close to frantic as he got. " Find out what's going on."

He snapped open his phone and stabbed a number. Chewing his mouth, he suddenly hissed, " Who did you tell!?" into the phone.

A pause.

" I am not crazy. There are reporters at the hospital. Who talked?"

Another pause, with a quiet tinny voice chiming in.

" Was it Yugi? He's been morose enough lately to be bitter. Devlin is technically my competitor, was it him?"

Kaiba waited and then drew his phone away from his ear.

Isono stared at him in the mirror.

"What happened?"

"Joey. He said I was delusional. And he called me a bitch."

Isono couldn't help his eyebrows skating up to his hairline.

" Um."

"He actually called me a crazy bitch."

Seto seemed aware of the enormous divide between the two him's that occupied this year. It seemed to really bother him.

By the time they got home, Joey's blue Stanza was parked in the driveway. The man himself was standing on the stoop, hands on his hips. Security wasn't even stopping him anymore, Isono tried not to feel responsible. He looked like a peeved house wife. Somehow it caused both men to want to avoid getting out of the car. Joey walked up, opened the car door and bodily pushed Kaiba so he could sit down.

" They were looking for the pop star, Ryokoza. He turned his ankle onstage and they were hoping to get a picture without makeup. Now what the hell was that? We would never rat you out to the press. Where do you get off?"

"Why shouldn't you?" Seto sneered. " Why should I believe any of this? Explain to me Joey how you can just let go of everything I was and said and just embrace me because I'm dying. It's hypocrisy to say you don't hold a grudge. "

" Youre not dying, you jackass. Youre sick. And therefore youre a brat, so yeah we can put up with it. And you know what, I hated you when you were hurting my friends and killing yourself for no reason. But I have always invited you to be my friend. Even when I was some punk on the street. Because of Yugi and then eventually just for me. Why don't you admit that that's why you're freaking out, huh? Because Solomon is dying and Yugi is grieving and you're afraid, ok? You're fucking afraid!"

Seto had fallen silent, his eyes wide. Isono forced his stare away and off into the bushes.

" Of course I'm afraid."

"Yeah, you think Mokuba is going to end up like Yugi? Well guess what, its going to be much worse. You keeping this from him, is going to ruin everything you had. That's why youre thinking about grudges like you are."

" Taking some courses doesn't give you inscrutable insight Wheeler!"

"No, knowing you since highschool, theres my insight, Kaiba!"

They both breathed for a minute. When Joey spoke again, his voice was softer.

" We aren't business associates. We aren't Pegasus or Gozaburo. You should know by now we don't want anything from you. But we are angry at you for keeping this a secret. Youre making me lie to my sister by proxy. I don't like it. But I do it for you. So calm down. Seriously, breathe. "

Isono turned around in his chair. Seto was sweating so badly his bangs were darkening. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open, muscles twitching to do their job. Joey and Isono shared a look. Between the two of them, they got Seto into the house and onto the living room sofa, with a glass of water and a bucket.

Joey pushed his head down and started rubbing wide circles into his back.

" Well that's certainly the most original way to end an argument."

Seto retched and quivered, face buried in the bucket. Isono flipped on the weather channel and pretended to watch it.

" I grew up with an alcholohic father and spent the rest of my childhood swinging at anyone who got close enough. When I met Yugi, I was bullying him and throwing his ancient relics in the pool. I know a thing or two about grudges, the people that hold them and letting them go. Sure, my memories of you aren't great but hey most of my time with Yugi has been spent in mortal peril, so it's a standard. We're both curb kids, buddy, let me in."

Seto managed to control his breathing and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

Joey patted his shoulder, " I'm not hugging you until you change that shirt now." Then he laughed and laughed. He went home a few hours later. Seto didn't say anything else that day and eventually Isono followed him to bed.

They both woke up the next morning to Isono's phone ringing. It was Mr. Moga at the front gate. He was Isono's second and had been running most of the security, since Isono had found himself as the house runner and nurse.

" Mr. Isono?" the low voice boomed through the speaker.

Seto pushed his face further into Isono's armpit till it felt like he was bruising a rib.

" Mhm. What is it?" Isono asked.

" Mr. Pegasus is at the front gate, sir."

Isono felt like he'd been struck by lightning. Seto heard it and sat up ramrod straight. Only awareness of their situation ( curled up in bed) seemed to keep him from ripping Isono's phone away.

" What does he want?"

"He says Mr. Kaiba missed an appointment with him. He wants to come inside."

A voice from near the phone, shouted, " to chat!" with boyish enthusiasm.

Isono looked over at Kaiba who looked like he had just been given an impossible task. Like the businessman he was, Kaiba nodded.

Isono ran down the hall to get dressed so he could open the door. Pegasus was there shockingly quickly, flouncing inside in red and gold velvet like he was the goddamn king of France. He was followed closely by Croquet. Isono felt a rush of excitement. He hadn't seen a familiar ( and equal) face in a long time. Sure it was tempered by anger at what Croquet was complicit in. But the kid in him was lonely in this world of genius children and a part of him had longed for someone to drink with and toast his bizarre lot in life. Croquet offered a hand. Isono clasped it firmly. Theyd talk later.

" So where is dear, Kaiba-boy. Well not such a boy anymore, getting closer to thirty and then what _will _I call him." He elbowed Croquet good naturedly. Isono tried not to swallow.

Somehow even Pegasus seemed to have mellowed out over the years. He wasn't striding through the house checking for dust or demanding to be toured about. He waited patiently and made cheerful small talk in the foyer. Isono didn't want them going into the lobby, from there you could see the stairs. And stairs were so hard for Seto now.

"Alright, Isono, I understand the importance of your job. But youre stalling, I must insist I see-'

"Hello, Pegasus."

Kaiba was standing at the bottom of the stairs. Truly Kaiba, in his form altering coat and upturned chin. Even his voice had lost it's reediness. But he was white knuckling the banister.

Pegasus' artist eyes weren't fooled for an instant.

His voice dropped and he came down from his half tip toe.

" What's happened?"

" I don't know what-"

" My wife died in our home, young man, I know the feel of a sick house."

He pushed past Isono like he was nothing.

" I ask again, what's happened?"

" I'm sick." Kaiba said and suddenly it seemed hard to stand again, and the coat just looked silly with the sleeves draping off his wrists.

" Lets go sit down, my dear." He stepped forward and curled his hand over Seto's forearm and started to lead him away. If Kaiba had resisted, Isono knew he would have shot him. Lost a friend, a career, every future happiness for revenge. But Kaiba went willingly, if weakly and the two former friends were in the foyer alone.

Isono turned to the man who had locked up two soulless boys in a dungeon of stone. Behind the glasses, Croquet was unfathomable but he curled a rough hand over Isono's shoulder and guided him to a kitchen, he'd never seen. Like his master, he seemed to be holding the adult card Isono had lost along the way.

Croquet helped Isono make tea while Pegasus sat Seto down on the couch.

" Explain it to me, the symptoms, the doctor. Youre getting the best care, Isono, is he getting the best care!?"

" I speak for myself," Seto snapped but everyone ignored him.

"He's getting top quality care, Mr. Pegasus." Isono said. Kaiba craned his head over the couch cushions to glare at him. Isono shrugged and accidently dumped sugar on the floor.

" Now, now. Don't get fussy, I know a worried friend when I see one."

On the floor, picking up granules, Isono felt his face heat. Croquet smiled at him and mopped up the rest. They rose together.

" So tell me," Pegasus said, " What are your symptoms?"

" Seizures, fevers, loss of control over bodily functions. Masses in the brain."

Seto rattled them off like he was reporting on the news of a foreign country.

Pegasus' face darkened.

" A good time had by all, I'm sure."

" Sure."

Pegasus suddenly smiled at him, kind and sheepish. " I actually came to see Mr. Mouto. Give him my condolences. He and I seem to have patched up our former dislike. But you and I-"

Pegasus winced. " The real regret I feel is for what I did to you."

Kaiba looked back at him blankly. Too tired to respond or read him, it seemed. He was once so good at playing possum.

" I could say I was overcome with a magic I couldn't control. I could say that. And I have. That you were enough of my equal that I didn't take hurting you seriously. But I will say this. I always felt regret that I didn't take you from this house."

Kaiba's eyes twitched in surprise.

" I built up a friendship with you. Probably the first one you ever had and tarnished it, with deception and sadism. I'm sorry. I really am very sorry."

Kaiba blinked but said nothing. It was so quiet in the house that Isono could hear the gardener sweeping leaves on the property.

Kaiba started and then stopped. Then he tried again. Isono braced himself for vitrol.

" I would have done the same thing for Mokuba. If anyone can understand desperate it's me. At my worst, I had people beaten, tormented…for pieces of paper. No one should ever have to come to me for forgiveness."

Pegasus reached over and gently patted Seto's cheek.

" I know you don't want to believe in reincarnation. But I think I knew you as this man here."

"A dead man."

"A good man."

Pegasus agreed to come back in a few weeks to talk again. That and he wanted to " stay in this fabulous estate!"

He waved gaily from the car and left. Croquet had slipped him a card with his personal number on it while they threw out the tea no one had ever planned to drink. It felt good in his pocket.

Seto had stayed on the couch. When Isono came back, he was on his side, watching the DOW rise and fall. He started to stand and pitched forward, legs limp beneath him. They didn't talk about. That they had been waiting for it, the time when Kaiba couldn't walk anymore. They wouldn't admit the wheelchair in the hallway had been there for a week. Seto didn't meet his eyes when Isono picked him up. It was like carrying a body bag full of crushed wedding lilies. He must have said it out loud because Seto snickered. Isono realized how bridal this all felt, carrying a slender body up a garish staircase. He was overdue to call his mother.

" He patted my face. He's such a grandma," Seto said pleasantly. He was trying to hold up his head and failing.

" Why did he come?" Isono wondered out loud, settling Kaiba in bed. The young man smirked up at him.  
" Joey was too defensive the other day. I think he's been giving Yugi some false news to plant. Probably invented some gossip to pass on that I was inventing again. Now that we share animation contracts…Pegasus is nothing if not curious."

He kept talking conspiracies under his breath until he slept. Isono thought about calling Croquet. Instead he climbed into bed. He didn't want to think about Solomon or Yugi or Pegasus and his wife because it all lead to Mokuba. And the fact that Joey wasn't just head peeping. He was right. Beside him Seto started a soft wheeze. Isono ticked off another symptom in his head. He stared at the ceiling and wondered if this is what it was to be Kaiba, spinning with information with no hope to make it concrete. Once again he resolved to call Mokuba; he knew by morning Seto's head would be buried in his chest. That bravado was buried deeper everyday. He wondered if this was love. Or possession.


	11. Chapter 11

Sometimes Isono forgot that Mrs. Hirohita had been pushed into an early retirement by a Kaiba too embarrassed to have a full house. All the servants had, besides Isono ( and the garden and security staff as they worked outdoors or in the office). They had been well taken care of and would continue to receive pay as stockholders in Kaiba Corp, even if they had never taken the offer. He knew the generosity appeared callous but it was as close to loving as Kaiba often got with family. He would protect and keep you financially but ask for a smile and you would be out of luck. But even knowing all this, sometimes he looked for the woman.

The house seemed so much bigger now. And darker since Kaiba was too sick and Isono too distracted to keep up with buying new lightbulbs. They had an appointment with the expert, Dr. Helena today. At least they would have if the snow let up. Fall had left them in a rush and winter had stormed in and made itself at home. The Doctor might cancel any minute from the black ice. Isono might cancel from sheer terror. He didn't think Seto could take another white coat handing out less time. At four, the hospital called and canceled. Isono sighed with relief and took down another time, later that week. His personal cellphone rang in his pocket. He got off one phone and onto another. It was Croquet.

" Master Pegasus was hoping he could stay over."

Somewhere in the background, Pegasus shouted, "the weather is just ghastly." Isono sometimes felt he was a footman in the 16th century, surrounded by soldiers and fops. Seto had given Pegasus a clear pass to the house, so Isono had to say yes. They hung up immediately after the first syllable. Isono went upstairs to wake up Seto.

He was curled into his side, he'd been pretty miserable today. His thick hair was starting to thin. Isono had offered to shave his head if Seto wanted to avoid the slower process.

Kaiba just glared it him, " We'll look like a pair of breasts. And it would be hard to explain why mono made me completely bald, Isono."

Seeing the eye rolling felt good, the moping did not.

Isono very gently rubbed his shoulder. " I know," Seto said from under the blankets. " He's coming."

" I can cancel," Isono said. He just realized he hadn't said the customary 'sir' in a while. It was odd that he couldn't see himself doing it again, especially with essentially a patient/bedmate.

" No, it's alright." Seto sat up slowly and looked up at Isono, trying not to look expectant. Isono scooped him up into his arms. Seto was getting less awkward to carry, no longer so stiff and unyielding. He settled his soft hair against Isono's neck.

" We're like a bridal party with amnesia."

Isono snorted and nearly dropped him down the stairs.

He put Seto in his wheelchair and watched him try to make it move. Since Seto couldn't walk at all anymore it was a necessity. The last surge of strength seemed to have been the last straw. His thin fingers got caught in the wheelchair spokes when he tried to push the wheels, so Isono pushed him about. He still tried to move it himself though, the stupid bastard, no matter how many fingers he jammed. Pegasus got there when Seto had managed to turn over a side table, shouting " I'm an engineer, why do I not have an automated wheelchair!?"

Isono headed for the door but couldn't help shouting over his shoulder, " Because you and Joey wanted to have a race, remember? Upper body strength contest or something?"

He opened the door and Croquet was helping Pegasus off his ass.

" Black ice is a nightmare" Pegasus chuckled. " I had a perfect ass but I think now, theres a crack in it!"

It was such an old joke Isono couldn't help but laugh. Pegasus was like a Bond villain so much of the time, it was good to see he was also a middle aged business man with bad jokes, bad taste and the humility to bear both.

He offered a hand to Isono and then swept in while the Croquet handed him bag after bag from the trunk.

" Is he living here?" asked Isono under his breath.

Croquet shrugged, inscrutable.

" He's worried. He paints when he worries."

Isono could see again why someone like Croquet understood him. Being devoted as they were, involved as they were, you couldn't help but fall in love alittle with the people you cared for. You wouldn't be doing the job right if you didn't. He clasped the man's hand hard and helped him with his coat.

Pegasus was bustling about the kitchen, looking for wine and informing Kaiba about the scandals he'd missed in America.

"- And he wasn't a man at all. At least not before insemination."

" If youre going to say insemination, I'm going to need some coffee."

Isono glared at him. Kaiba looked ready to ignore him but Pegasus shook his head.

" No legal drugs for you, my friend. You can have a sip of wine to help you sleep and that's it."

" I don't need help sleeping," Seto said sardonically. Croquet nudged him forward. Isono let himself be handed vegetables to chop. He was starting to forget how to be a servant. Seto didn't really treat him like one anymore.

" So…have you seen a specialist?"

" We see her this week," Seto said easily.

" Any new symptoms?"

"I'm having trouble concentrating, actually. It's obnoxious."

Boy, had he. Seto was too smart for television but too distracted by pain for his typical journals on advancement so he usually did neither. He spent most of his day staring at the wall now, handing his paperwork to accountants and Board members that Isono had grilled again and again.

" You should listen to music, dear thing. I think you would be an excellent candidate for jazz. A gift from America, should you ever miss me."

Seto snorted and then breathed hard, trying to shift himself from the wheelchair to the couch. Isono dropped the celery to help but Pegasus leaned forward and seized him, dragging him from under his arms like a cat.

"There we are" he said and offered Kaiba a reduced glass of red. " Take a sip, you need the antioxidants."

No one but Isono knew the games Gozaburo would play, getting Seto drunker and drunker, as he was forced to walk, recite, even fight under the influence. He would grab him, rough and sexually to see if Seto would resist. Seto never drank. He had no tolerance. He would politely turn it down.

He took a sip and grimaced.

" Disgusting."

Pegasus made a noise of mock affront.

" Really now? I can't expect you to have a refined palate though, not with all the coffee you drink. You've most likely burnt off all your taste buds."

They argued about taste until Isono and Croquet were done with dinner. Well, until Croquet was done with dinner and Isono had unfrozen a cheesecake with a tub of lukewarm water.

The businessmen ate at the couch, balancing plates on their knees. Isono felt unbelievably grateful, eating in the kitchen with Croquet that they hadn't moved to the dining room. He didn't want to carry his employer in front of these people, no matter how kind they were. God, how were they going to go to bed? Isono would stay in his own room. He ignored the hollow feeling he got at that.

Croquet stole a sweet potato fry off his plate, Isono stabbed at his hand with a spoon. It was jarring to feel 80 one moment and 14 the next. He wondered again, if this was how Seto felt, all the time.

He thought about Mokuba.

Croquet snagged another fry.

Croquet and Isono were relieved and took their slices of cheesecake into the back dining room, leaning close and catching up. The rambling interrupting language of old estranged friends.

" My master apologized. But I didn't. And I should."

Isono looked up at him. Croquet took off his glasses and his eyes were as salt and pepper as his hair. He looked as old as this house felt.

" You were forced away from your master before he became what he was. I stayed. So I can't explain to you, what it is to see it happen and have no influence. But you know what it is to come back and have it already done, which I will never understand. I wanted to say that I'm sorry. And doing my job isn't something I can hide behind anymore."

"Is he better?" Isono asked and offered his crust in lieu of a verbal show of forgiveness.

Croquet smiled.

" He still grieves on occasion but without that thing in his head, he isn't delusional. He's every inch the man he was meant to be, maybe with more dents than I'd like. Tell me the truth, how is master Kaiba?"

" Certainly no one's master." Isono said with a rueful smile back, "he's losing ground. I wish he'd be more masterful sometimes."

"This relaxing. It's strange but its good. It doesn't mean he's not fighting. It means he's thawing. Encourage it. "

Isono had never thought of it like that before.

They talked on magic and bizarre children until it was very late and Isono's Kaiba sense started tingling. Croquet took their plates to the kitchen and Isono peered into the living room. Seto was slumped halfway over, asleep. Pegasus had an easel out and was painting him. The colors were perfect. The lines of his lashes-flawless.

" You can take him." Pegasus said gently. " It's no portrait. I'm just trying to think."

Isono nodded to him and waved goodnight to Croquet. He paused before sweeping the young man up and into his arms. Seto went limply and did not wake up. He expected to feel shame on Seto's behalf. He didn't. Maybe he had become as stony and distrusting as Kaiba. It was an uncomfortable thought.

" Can you two find your rooms?"

"Yes, yes" Pegasus said dismissively but not unkindly. He was completely invested in the painting. Isono remembered that focus. The dreams those two visionaries had made together, what they could have done now. Isono, true to form, slept in his own bed. But he didn't sleep and around 5:30 he went to Seto's room and the young man was awake and looking for him.

He smiled shyly and lay back down. Isono climbed into bed and curled around him chastely.

The snow kept everyone inside the next day so they all slept late. Isono had eventually come down in the early afternoon and he and Croquet surveyed the painting curiously. It was mostly undeveloped lines and shapes but Kaiba's half hidden face was identical. Isono had always appreciated skill. He wondered where Pegasus would hang it. But the thought creeped him out so he let it go.

When he came up the stairs, Pegasus had found Seto's room and was sitting on the end of the bed, trying to wake the young man by rubbing his leg. His long hair was knotted in the back. It was disarming, like he'd walked into a middle age men's sleep over party.

" Seto….Setooo"

" What is it Mok-?" asked Seto half awake and then seeing Pegasus blanched in embarrassment. Isono's heart hurt at the millisecond of disappointment.

" Don't be embarrassed, you would have expected an adult if I had woken you like one." Pegasus said. But then his face sobered.

" Solomon Mouto died this morning. His funeral is tomorrow at noon. They want to get him into the ground before it freezes again, I suppose. "

Seto tried to suppress a full body shiver. Only his steady eyes showed that it wasn't a seizure. Isono thought about those frail hands. He hoped peace wasn't the fiction Seto believed it was.

" Is there a wake?" Seto asked.

"Yes. I assumed the family would want it to be private. We can call back if you want to check." Seto waved the idea away. Instead he looked up at Isono.

" I need a suit."


	12. Chapter 12

The news drew the wind out of everyone's sales. Pegasus brooded over past sins in his room, painting horrors. Seto slept like the dead. Croquet and Isono got fat on cheesecake and watched and lost at Jeopardy. Isono didn't want to think about death, so he didn't. He thought,' what is? 'instead. Since Seto hadn't eaten, Isono gave him an IV an hour before bed. He carried him to and from the bathroom and thought about suits and matching ties. But that night, Seto didn't just nuzzle in close, he clung. His hands were fisted in Isono's shirt so hard, Isono was convinced it would tear.

What is premonition?

What is running out of time?

What is loss?

Eventually the whole house slept but too early they were all awake. Isono found Seto a black suit and tie. They had argued a bit about the tie. Seto wanted a white one. Isono pressed that it would make him look like a forties gangster or a waiter. They were both just avoiding this incoming shit storm of emotions. Pegasus wore grey and purple. It was essentially what everyone had expected.

Carrying him down the stairs, Isono was struck so hard by a flaw in their plan that he nearly stumbled. Seto whacked him on the back of the head, lightly.

" Don't drop me!"

" What are we going to do? The press knows Yugi's last name. As private as it is someone will take a picture and there you'll be in a wheelchair, at a funeral looking-."

"Like death?"

"Well, yes."

Seto thought for a moment. Isono didn't set him down, the wheelchair was in the trunk and they were at an impasse at the bottom of the stairs.

" We risk it then." Seto shrugged. " let's go."

Isono was floored.

" What do you mean, risk it? Risk it?! No plan, nothing, just 'oh well'."

"Yes" snapped Seto, craning his head to look at him, something he hadn't had to do in years.

" It's not my day yet. It's not about me."

Isono grit his teeth but didn't fight him. This was a lesson he'd wanted Seto to learn for years but not in regards to his own death. They got in the car together. Croquet drove and Isono took the passenger seat. Pegasus fussed with everyone's hair until they got there. They all looked wind tossed from the experience.

Solomon Mouto had been a man of the world. No one religion comprised him and therefore it was right that the ceremony was not in a church, not under the hand of a holy man of the west. Marik was wearing white robes and speaking Egyptian to the frozen field of the shrine. To the people gathered there. Isono's hand twitched for his gun. He didn't trust these villians turned friends, these monsters turned youngsters. He pushed the wheelchair too hard over a rock and nearly knocked Seto out. Seto, behind Isono's sunglasses was still squinting in pain.

Isono hoped that Yugi understood what this meant.

So many people were here. The typical group was crowded around Yugi. A Buddhist priest was saying something now. Mai Valentine was there, holding Joey's hand. Isis and Odion. Rebecca Hawkings and her grandfather, looking drawn and so old. The wheelchair was shockingly loud. Everyone turned to look at them, the priest faltered. Seto sat straight and still until they all looked away. Joey held Seto's eyes and nodded. Isono didn't know what that meant. It wasn't like a typical Japanese ceremony but maybe they had done that last night.

They instead lowered a small box into the earth. In the theology of ancient Egypt, Solomon had had his organs preserved, for Japanese culture, the rest was cremated. Seto started to shake. He was seizing. Isono put a hand on his shoulder to steady him. Marik spoke again. It seemed like the ceremony was over, people were shifting about, speaking. Mai came over to Seto, eyes narrowed. Isono didn't like the look of her. Thankfully the shudders tapered off before she reached them.

" What'd you do to yourself, sweet pea?"

"Hard living" he said in the clipped tight voice he had after seizures.

She smiled at him. She really was a stunning woman. She was even prettier here, dressed down and in a black dress which touched her knees. Grey leggings against the cold. She looked like an adult, not a sordid teenager. She looked over Isono's head but not without winking at him.

" Pegasus, you missed the wake."

" I know, darling, I was at Kaiba's trapped in the snow."

" He's rich, you could've rent a plow on his dime. Or yours."

" I cracked my tailbone, my dear, on this black ice."

"Then you should've thrown salt."

"Salt reaction doesn't occur in this low a temperature." Seto chimed in, tiredly.

Isono wanted Seto to stop talking. He sounded so faint.

" Well, well, well. Someone's not too sick for chemistry."

She leaned down. Isono didn't know how she kept her balance, lowering those enormous breasts.

" Listen, Yugi's place is too small for a reception. Could we come back with you? Joey didn't want me to ask. I didn't think you'd mind with that much space."

Seto didn't hesitate.

" Of course."

Isono gaped down at the top of his head. He was already tired. Maybe he planned on just letting them run amok while he hid upstairs. They headed back to the car. Yugi had never approached them, nor vice versa. Once inside, Seto slumped against Pegasus, breathing hard.

" Jesus Christ," Pegasus said and wrapped his coat around them both. " Deep breaths, just try to catch your breath." He rubbed Seto's shoulders like he thought they might ignite.

Seto had managed to settle the cold out of his lungs by the time they got back to the mansion. Isono swept him up and into the house, fast to make sure no one saw. Poor Seto gripped his head, dizzy.

"Do you want to go upstairs?"

" Just for a few minutes." Seto breathed and Isono took him there. He had no intention at all of bringing him back down again.

Isono had gotten a Nebulizer at their last appointment. He bundled Seto into the bed and fastened it to his face. Seto wrinkled his nose behind the mask. The mist didn't smell or taste fantastic. He knew he had to get the kitchen at least somewhat ready for attack. But he didn't want to go. Seto was so sick. Isono was even afraid to push a hand into his hair in case it decided to fall out. Instead he smoothed a hand over his clammy forehead and left, closing the door behind him. People were already milling about downstairs. Pegasus was leading people around; Croquet was making little snacks in the kitchen while Duke and Joey watched with the single minded interest of canines.

Joey looked up when he came in at least.

" He ok?"

" He's a bit tuckered out. He just needs a moment."

Joey leaned in, seriously. " He was not this sick a few weeks ago. Are we sure this is cancer, it's moving really fast."

" Sometimes it does that" Tristan said, Isono looked up at him.

" My uncle, essentially the guy who raised me, got pancreatic cancer when I was a kid. Took him in two months."

" I'm very sorry" Isono said softly and Tristan shrugged.

"Hopefully, he and Gramps are playing cards. Dave wasn't any good but…you know."

Isono tried a smile. It seemed to work, Tristan went back to cramming appetizers. Tea came up from behind Isono so fast, he nearly drew the gun he no longer carried.

" Have you guys seen Yugi? I feel like he's holed up in a bathroom somewhere." The gang hurried off and Bakura came up to snag a snack. He looked better than he had before. He'd filled out and had smile lines. He shook Isono's hand and didn't seem to remember their combined history.

Isono was not about the remind him.

After a few minutes, bumping into Marik and getting a jubilant smack on the back and seeing Mai again ( who grabbed his ass), Isono was getting worried again. For one, the gang of kids had gone…somewhere. And another, for a funeral, these people were loud. Isono enjoyed happy people but Seto was upstairs, sick. Trying to sleep. Eventually he tore himself away and tripped over himself to get up the stairs. The door was cracked open. Isono stilted his breathing and peeked through.

Seto was propped up against the headboard. The nebulizer was still on is face, giving his profile a Hannibal Lector profile in the dark. He was holding someone in his arms. Yellow red and black hair was jutting up against Seto's chin. Someone was crying roughly. Seto looked over at him. Isono backed away and gently shut the door. He found Joey downstairs ( in the laundry room…again) and told him where Yugi was and to give him space. Evenutally the young man came down himself. His face was blotchy from crying but he was sporting a tentative smile. He immediately started apologizing to his friends, hugging them, holding their hands. People were thawing in the middle of winter.

Marik offered Yugi a stay in Egypt. Pegasus, having to out do him, shook Yugi's hand and told him soberly that if he needed a break, he could always rediscover Duelist Kingdom. This prompted an enormous explosion of stories from the insular gang while the rest of them laughed and enjoyed the wines Pegasus had dragged out of the cellar.

"So I was cooking the candy bars-"

"-they were good!"

"Yug, they were better than good. They were cooked candybars, so ooey gooey-"

Suddenly Joey stopped. They all stopped. The room was silent as the front door slid shut.

Isono turned on his heel, his heart in his throat.

Mokuba Kaiba stood in the foyer of his old home, Serenity behind him, kicking off her shoes. She was smiling to see everyone.

Mokuba looked livid.


	13. Chapter 13

Then he turned and started up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Isono ran to catch him.

" Mokuba, wait, _Mokuba_!"

"You!" he snarled, spinning on his heel. " You get the fuck away from me, Isono."

" You can't go in there, he's trying to sleep-"

"I swear to God," Mokuba hissed into his face, spitting mad, " if I wasn't sure he forced you into it, I'd fucking kill you right now."

Joey was suddenly at his elbow.

" Listen kid, I know you're angry."

"He should be, Joey, you lied to us," Serenity said softy from the foot of the stairs. Joey threw up his hands in exasperation.

" Will you love birds give us ten damn seconds to explain!?"

Mokuba turned and continued up the stairs. Isono grabbed his elbow. He'd never manhandled any of the Kaibas. Ever. He really expected Mokuba to kick him in the face. He just stopped. Then he took a heavy breath and rounded again. Calmer at least.

" I'm not gonna hurt him. I'm gonna yell at him."

" Please don't." Isono didn't really know where this panic was coming from. " He's so afraid of hurting you, you go in there raging at him, he'll never be honest with you again."

The house was so quiet that they all heard Yugi moisten his lips to speak.

" I just spoke to him about it. I was mad, Mokuba. I was really angry with him for not telling you. For keeping it from us. He's my last real familial link to Yami. And the idea that he would give up without a fight really made me want to hate him, for the first time in my life. He didn't give up Mokuba. He hasn't and he won't. He's just scared." Yugi choked up suddenly and Tea put her arms around him, crouching.

" He didn't want you to watch him die." The tears in his voice, spear headed a rush of pain in Isono's eyes. He couldn't cry now. He couldn't. Not now.

Mokuba stared down at the room full of people and slowly deflated.

"I'm sorry Yugi. I didn't mean to be so dramatic today."

Yugi smiled through his tears and shook his head.

Isono gentled his hand as Mokuba turned to him again and then sank into his chest with a sigh. Here was his little boy. All grown up but still so sweet.

He pulled away and grabbed ahold of Joey too, apologizing into his shoulder.

When Joey let him go, he looked up at Isono again.

" I still need to see him. I need to talk to him. But I won't freak him out."

" Well we're coming, ya crazy kid." Joey said and pushed Isono forward up the stairs.

It was almost dramatic enough that Isono expected a crescendo of clapping. Instead the conversation awkwardly started buzzing again. Mokuba opened Seto's door and snuck in, Isono closed the door behind Joey. In his room, the white noise of the nebulizer was so loud that Seto shouldn't have been able to hear them. He had. He was trying to sit up and there was misery in his eyes, over the edges of the hard mask.

The brothers squared off across a sick bed. Mokuba slowly came forward. Isono remembered a time when Mokuba stood only a tad taller than Yugi. He was as tall as Tristan now. Seto had to tip his head back alittle to see him. His hair was matted thickly. Another fever? Isono wrecked the moment by gently checking Seto's forehead and pulse. Probably a bad seizure then. He didn't let go of Seto's smooth wrist. Mokuba looked at him with something new in his expression. Like he didn't know who Isono was.

He leaned past him and into Seto's face.

" Why didn't you tell me?"

Seto batted at the mask, trying to get it off. Isono loosened it and turned off the machine. The quiet was heavy. Seto's breathing was too.

" Because it's my fault."

Everyone in the room perked up. That was not what any of them had expected to hear.

"Seto, you did not give yourself cancer. You're too anal retentive for that."

" Not that," he whispered. " You, everything that happened to you is my fault."

"Seto-"

"Please let me say it."

Mokuba fell silent. Isono wished Mokuba would hold his hand or something. Until he realized he was doing it already. He still didn't let go.

"In the orphanage. A family wanted you. Just you. I could have given you up to a better life. But I didn't. I was afraid. You could have grown up with brothers and sisters. In a normal house, without abuse and kidnapping and neglect. You could have had this great life and I took it from you. I took everything. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Tears were lighting his eyes but not falling. He was quaking with effort. Isono stroked his knuckles.

" That's bullshit."

"Mokuba" Joey breathed, scolding but Mokuba continued, "You think I'd be happy with anyone but you? Is that what's been under your skin the last few years? You can't undo the past Seto, its over but you can live into the future."

Seto shook his head.

" I'm not going to."

"Dammit listen."

"I'm not giving up," he murmured. " But I can't beat this. No matter how much I want to. I can't. It's too big. There's not enough of me to give to it. And I didn't want you to see me go under."

Mokuba's face was pinched with pain, tears were rolling fat down his cheeks.

" I love you. There's no other place for me to be. What's the real reason you didn't tell me, be honest."

Two tears rolled down Kaiba's face and crested his chin. Isono had never seen more than one. He hated it.

" Because if I told you this, it would be real. It would be over. And I think I remember death. I think I died before, no matter how many times I say I don't believe in Yugi's magic. And I don't want to go back. It's so dark."

Mokuba moved forward and gathered Seto into his arms, sobbing roughly. Seto let go of Isono's hand and put it on Mokuba's back. Joey guided him backwards and out of the room. Isono didn't realize until he was back downstairs with Croquet, that he'd been dreading Mokuba's return even more than Seto had.

Everyone stayed over, they were mostly too drunk to drive around and black ice had settled on everything. He didn't sleep in Seto's room that night. Mokuba did. Isono slept horribly alone, but apparently the brothers slept terribly too as Mokuba showed up in the kitchen around 6 searching for coffee and his girlfriend's room. Isono had been down there chipping cheese out from under the stove top. Joey had drank too much white wine spritzers and had tried to cook things directly over the not flame. He didn't go into Seto's room and tuck himself into the covers. But he did check on him. Seto didn't open his eyes.

Isono stroked his ear to make him twitch and prove himself alive. Then he went to make soup. When he came back up, Pegasus was sitting on Seto's bed, trying to wake him. He'd pulled him up and into his arms and was patting his cheeks around the mask lightly. Seto was trying to wake up but it just wasn't taking. The man looked up and spotted him. The night tufted hair showed his glass eye to full effect. Isono felt a wave of foreboding. Secrets. Magic.

" Isono come in, I have a theory we must discuss."

" What is it?"

Seto, awake enough, shrugged Pegasus off and lay back down. He pulled a pillow over to block the light. It was dim in the room. His eyes were getting worse.

" When my wife was dying, we couldn't find a diagnosis. We tried everything, specialty clinics of all kinds. But it was so fast."

For all his patience and understanding, Isono was tired of sadness.

" We met one young woman who believed she had rheumatoid arthritis. Instead she had lymes disease. A very painful treatment. But it started us thinking on the line of parasites.'

"What did Cecelia have?" Seto interrupted. He didn't open his eyes to ask. It was muffled behind the mask.

Pegasus smiled sadly and patted Seto's foot.

" Huntington's. It moved so quickly that it didn't show it's normal development. There was nothing that could be done."

Seto moved the pillow so he could make eye contact, even though it must have hurt him.

"I'm sorry."

Another foot pat.

" So heres the idea. I think, Kaiba, that you have parasites."

"Flattering, thank you."

" I'm not saying it to insult you or give you false hope but it sounds very similar to a patient in my wife's hospital. Tell me, have you been to Africa?"

Isono felt relief. He'd never been.

"Yes."

Wait, what.

" Gozaburo took me there to meet a client."

"Did you come into contact with any food, blood?"

" I didn't eat anything that didn't come out of a packet. He left me in the hotel most days."

" Did you walk in bare feet."

"No."

Isono was trying not to show how much this was bothering him. Seto had been carted off to another continent and Isono hadn't even known. But at least they could let go of this fantasy-

" Wait….he pushed me down into the mud. It got all over my teeth. May have swallowed some. Could that be it?"

"That, my boy, is exactly it!"

Pegasus surged forward and seized his shoulders.

" Parasitic diseases are treatable. Most parasites, especially hook worms, cause cysts that are impossible to detect in MRI's. They burrow. They eat out your intestine and your eyes. But it's treatable. You don't have to die from it."

Isono was already on the phone, placing an emergency appointment.

" Isono, it's just a theory," Seto huffed.

" And you're a young man. The faster we act on theories, the better it'll go."


	14. Chapter 14

The doctors were pretty taken aback by the theory. They were more taken aback when the blood test had come back positive. Poor Dr. Helena hadn't been needed at all for her degree. She didn't seem to mind though. She came in with the positive test and explained it to them all gently. Besides Pegasus, the Egyptian and American families were still asleep. The rest of them were crammed in this small room, staring down a woman who was essentially speaking latin.

" Madam, please. We don't care what it is, can it be treated?" Pegasus said and she tried to withhold a glare.

" Yes, most definitely. You'll be completely recovered within a year. However we will have to commit ourselves to another surgery to remove the original cysts."

Before anyone could start freaking out, Kaiba chimed in.

" How did it happen?'

"Well typically, we receive these parasites by eating animals containing the worms. But some people accidently ingest fecal matter. In this way, they take in the eggs, which breed over many years and can penetrate the blood brain barrier. They hide in cysts while their siblings in the intestine break up the host body."

There was a heavy moment of silence, the cheery Indian doctor seemed to not notice.

Joey's were enormous and his eyebrows cocked upwards ridiculously.

" You mean all those times that I said you should 'eat shit and die'…"

Everyone in the room turned to stare at Joey in unison and before someone, namely Tea, could tell him off, Kaiba started to laugh. He tried to stop but more burst out of him, until he was wracking with humor, tears rolling down his face. Mokuba surged forward and threw his arms around, starting a domino effect of hugs and tears. Isono and the doctor made eye contact. She smiled and left the room. The kids were so loud, whooping and cheering and petting Kaiba all over, as if the very news of hope had somehow made him more durable. Stronger. Tristan thumped Isono on the back so hard, he lost his breath. Pegasus tried to give him a noogie. Over Yugi's head. Isono and Seto locked eyes. They didn't have to hug or shake hands or even speak. They did not even have to smile. Seto scoured his eyes over Isono's face and then let this gentleness settle over his eyes. This quiet assessment.

Isono thought, as loud as he could, _I love you too_.

Seto was prescribed some anti-parasitics ( and so was Isono for his debacle a few weeks ago) and they went home. Seto had to go back to sleep but the party started up again downstairs as Pegasus used his special ability to summon more alcohol. Isono didn't join them. Mokuba carried Seto and Isono trailed behind, almost shady in his desire for Mokuba to leave.

" Arent used to sharing anymore, are you?" Seto asked.

Isono glared at him. He wanted to lie down next to him and talk about the day, the drama downstairs, this crazy possessiveness that had come out of nowhere. The fact that they were probably sharing worms. He didn't. He went back to his room and tried to sleep. To get back to his old life, routine and goddamn feelings. It didn't work, all he could hear was Pegasus singing show tunes. Around 9 at night, he got a text.

_Seto: I'm tired. Stop being considerate._

_Isono: Is Mokuba there?_

_Seto: No, he says I kick._

_Seto:Please. _

Isono dragged himself out of bed. He climbed over Seto to get to his side, making him laugh before Isono put the mask back on his face. He had barely tucked the sheets up around them the way he liked before Seto was sleeping. Isono snuggled closer to him. He wasn't a stupid man. He hadn't ignored the risk of surgery. Neither had Seto. Seto wouldn't need someone with him if he thought this was over.

Neither of them know that Mokuba had come up to check on Seto around ten. He stood in the doorway for a long time. Before he chuckled and walked away. It would have been helpful for them to have seen that.


End file.
